Bricks Not Books

VintageHistorian

I have just had a week off work and it has been absolutely delightful.

Monday - Spent the entire morning lounging around in bed doing very little. Migrated downstairs in the afternoon and continued to do very little, but on the sofa.

Tuesday - Train strikes meant Mr VH was working from home. I went into town to pay in 2 more WI speakers cheques, did a bit of shopping, and then sat in Caffe Nero with my laptop and worked on some blog posts.

Wednesday - Had to be out the house just after 6.30 to take Me VH to a different train station as the strikes meant no trains on our branch until after 10am. I then used the early morning start to go for an early (7.45!) swim at a local open air swimming pool. It was very cold and I'm very out of practice, but also very nice. I followed it up with a bacon roll and a cup of tea in the cafe as soon as they opened at 9am.

Thursday - Another strike day meant Mr VH at home again. I drove up to a garden centre and had lunch in their cafe, then came home via supermarkets for the food shopping.

Friday - Another 6.30 drive. Came home and sat in bed with tea until I spotted that a local carboot sale was on that morning so I got dressed again and went to take a look. Came home with a Christmas biscuit tin (devoid of biscuits of course), a pretty brooch, and a paper cutter I'm hoping to make gifttags with.

Also did bits around the house including a bathtowel wash and the normal laundry, worked on my ebook, and generally pottered around. Unfortunately yesterday was rather spoilt by the news out of the USA. Along with the general upset of people's rights being taken away, I fear for anyone over there who now miscarries, as spiteful people will inevitably accuse them of having an abortion.

Mr VH received just over £68 for his delay repay claims from May, so £58 of that went to the mortgage this month and the other £10 I've kept to one side to help subsidise some food treats for him. Prices are shooting up and he's got hollow legs so this way he can have some Greek yoghurt and fruit without me worrying about the cost. More claims have since rolled in but I've said I'll transfer those to him to do as he wishes, I can't claim all of them for the mortgage.

I mentioned on f0xh0les' diary that I've already started Christmas present buying! Actually I've bought more than I remembered. So far I've got some Costa Coffee for Mr VH (50p after buying through a cashback app), some chocolate covered honeycomb for my brother (also 50p each after buying through a cashback app), and a candle from TK Maxx for one of my sisters (she likes "fresh" scents and they're hard to find at Christmas). I'm keeping track of them in a Google sheet so I know what I've got and how much I've spent. Next month I might start the book buying, to help spread the cost out.

No plans for this weekend, especially after all I've spent this week! Worth it though, I feel like I've had a proper break even though I haven't gone more than 10 miles from home. Next week off isn't until September, I wish I could have more annual leave!

Have a good week everyone!

VintageHistorian

Overalll June's OPs were £197.58, which was the first time we've ever OPed more than the monthly interest! Mr VH got another £100 of refunds for strikes etc but I've sent that back to him to do with as he wishes.

I feel like food shopping spending is getting a bit out of control at the moment. The price increases don't help, but the amount of yellowstickers I buy or things I forget and need to pop into to get is getting a bit silly. Yellowstickers work out in the long run, but only if I don't replace their space in the weekly shop with something of equal cost.

It's not been helped by the weather. Hot weather always affects my appetite, and I've generally been a bit bored of food recently. I wish I could say that's helped me lose weight but no such luck XD

The heat on Monday is quite concerning as I'm not good with temperatures beyond 25 or 26. It's okay on holiday when you can sit down and rest as much as you like, but when you're trying to concentrate on work? Nope.

Monday's dinner was supposed to be chicken risotto. But I don't want to put the oven on. So instead I'm going to cook the chicken breasts tomorrow, along with a lemon drizzle cake, some cheese straws, and a Spanish omelette. The chicken will then be sliced so me and Mr VH can have cold chicken sandwiches and cold Spanish omelette for dinner, with a Greek salad. No cooking necessary. I'll also use the bread for a ham sandwich for lunch.

Tuesday I'm less sure about. Might indulge in a takeaway, although I feel a bit guilty about expecting other people to be in a hot kitchen on my behalf. We've also got ice lollies in the freezer, and today I've been experimenting with alternating windows open/blinds closed in different rooms. It seems to have done a decent job, but will it stand up to the test when it's 36 degrees? Only time will tell.

Since my swim during my week off, I've returned to the lido twice for "aquacise" classes! They're only 30 minutes on Thursday nights and I can just about get back in time to get Mr VH from the station. But they were talking about making them 15 minutes later when I went last Thursday, which wouldn't work for me, so I might have to give them up.

And lastly on the money saving front, my regular savings account for part of the new car fund matured so I got £16 in interest paid. I've taken out £1800 and left £60 in the account, so I'll start feeding small amounts to it as the car of a new new car fund. £1000 can top up the savings account that I took cash from to pay for the car, and then the £800 is going to go in an S&S ISA that I'm going to open. Never had one before, only ever have cash ISAs in various forms. But I've been reading a lot around them and they seem like another string to have in the moneysaving bow, so I'm going to take the plunge.

Stay safe in the heat everyone!

VintageHistorian

Oh dear, has it really been July since I last updated this!?

Well first to get the OPs out the way:
July - £132.99
Aug - £138.59
Sept - £128.01
Oct - £133.51
Nov - £130.91

I do have a reasonable excuse for forgetting to update here. I'm currently 24 weeks pregnant. In fact end of July was when I got the positive pregnancy test and everything else pretty much just melted away at that point.

Naturally after 2 miscarriages it was a stressful time. I had some light bleeding just before my 8 week scan, ended up paying for an early private scan that showed baby had a heartbeat but the stress remained until we got to the 8 week one with the proper consultant. Got put on the blood thinning drugs then and there, and also Progesterone for 8 weeks as that can be helpful for recurrent miscarriages with early bleeding.

So basically a lot of time has been spent feeling like the sword of Damocles is hanging over us. Lots of holding our breath, relaxing slightly when we've had another positive scan, and then holding our breath again for the next appointment. But now we're at 24 weeks and survival rates go up on a daily basis from this point on. The blood thinners seem to be doing their job, even if injecting them into my stomach every morning is an unpleasant task (I give myself a couple of Galaxy Minstrels after the jab so make up for it). I have to do them up to the point where I'm in labour and then continue for 6 weeks postpartum as that's when your risk of a clot increases. But I'm also quite grateful that the cause of my losses was uncovered and there's medication I can take to treat it. I'm on a pregnancy after loss forum and there are so many women there who face another pregnancy with no answers.

But I will be calculating the number of injections I've had and recall it all at baby's 18th birthday XD This week I have a consultant appointment and a midwife one, having had my flu jab, Covid booster and a whooping cough jab since the last time I saw the midwife she'll have plenty to update on my records.

In money saving news...well there isn't much. Did the OPs but naturally the rest of it all fell to the wayside. I've been generous with having the heating on this week (and most of November) as I know DH will be worried and cross if he comes home to find I've just been shivering under a blanket with a hot water bottle instead of having the radiators on. And he's right, we're not at the point of choosing between heating and eating and if the bills get high then it just means the amount we pay into savings gets reduced. Best to keep myself and baby comfortable and safe than risk coming down with a nasty cold. I've also been working from home since I was 8 weeks pregnant, partly to help manage the anxiety but also to try and avoid office germs.

Festive season wise, I've managed to finish most of my Christmas shopping. I'm making Mr VH a Christmas treats hamper again and I just need to get some olive pastry twists and some extra chocolate and then he'll be done. I was going to get him some Green and Black's chocolate but from looking at reviews on the Tesco website it appears that the chocolate now has palm oil in it and there's been a drop in quality as a result. So now I'm wondering whether to get some anyway or try to find an alternative. He's also got some Hotel Chocolat chocolate and a small bar from an independent chocolatier I got at a Christmas market a few weeks ago, maybe I'll look for some extra biscuits instead (although he does also have 2 packs already).

The rest of the family are all done and on budget. I now just need to actually wrap things. The problem is that while most of my symptoms have lapsed I still feel very tired in the afternoons so after work I just want to have a little lie down before starting dinner. This week I should try to get at least two gifts per day wrapped up, whether I do that after work or during my lunch break, just to make a dent in it.

And now this post has become very long, so I will call it a day here and try to remember to come back another day to look at some of the ways I'm trying to sort out baby stuff for cheap/free! Dinner tonight will be chicken and parma ham pasta, a favourite for both me and Mr VH.

Have a good week everyone!

Fortune_Smiles

Oh VH!  That's such wonderful news.  I'm soooo pleased for you.

Fortune x

South_coast

Oh wow, congratulations on the pregnancy 😍! Hope everything goes smoothly for the next few months and you can start to relax a little. Perfectly understandable that that's taking up all of your attention x

smetf

Huge congratulations VH, that's lovely news. 
Very impressed that you've kept going with OPs and are all organised with Christmas shopping too - hopefully that will mean a relaxing Christmas for you all.
S x

Moneyfordreams

Huge congratulations to you both xx

ruby_eskimo

Huge congratulations to you and Mr VH and really hope the next few months go well for you all 🤗

VintageHistorian

Thank you everyone! I'm trying to get used to telling more people about baby so it's nice to be able to do anonymously in a place like this.

Medical appointments this week went fine. My consultant appointment was first, with a different doctor. Mostly it was checking that the Clexane is going okay and confirming I'll need to carry it on for longer than originally advised, which is all fine. She was also a bit more positive about birth preferences than the last consultant, and also pointed out that ultimately it's her job to advise me but I can actually say "yes" and "no" to things which made me feel a bit less worried.

And then the midwife appointment two days later was also good. She managed to find baby's heartbeat with a doppler, which got me a tiny bit tearful. I do feel movement but just being able to hear it and get confirmation that it sounded fine was a relief that I hadn't quite expected.

Pregnancy hormones continue to hit in ways I don't entirely expect. Mr VH has had to work three Saturdays in a row but I'm under strict instructions (mostly from him) to not lift and carry anything too heavy. This included Christmas trees, which I would normally haul into the boot of the car and then into the house without a second thought. But because he's been working I wasn't able to get my usual one from Tesco and they sell out quite quickly around here. I actually had a little cry about it last Sunday after we tried and failed to get one and I felt like it was just one more thing that should be easy but isn't, and I'm tired of every bloody thing being complicated.

Mr VH ordered some pine-scented stick things to "recreate" the ambience but this just made me a sadder at first. And then I gave my head a bit of a wobble and reminded myself that while this pregnancy hasn't exactly been easy I can at least say that I am having medical treatment to keep it going. I'm not fretting about whether we can afford to have this baby, I have savings to cover my maternity leave, I can cook a hot meal every night, and I don't have debts piling up with no way to pay them. In the grand scheme of things one year without a Christmas tree is not the end of the world.

We did venture out to a local garden centre yesterday to look for a tree, as Mr VH was worried about how upset I had been, but the only ones they had left were in pots and I don't think I can keep a tree alive over the summer! So I reassured Mr VH that I did not want to keep driving around looking for one, and could go without for this year. Instead we came home and I decorated our bookcases with the tree fairy lights, hung up a star ornament on our living room door knob, and have arranged a few Christmas-themed biscuit tins around the place. Once I get the Christmas chocolate out it won't look too different. I normally pay a local charity to collect and recycle the Christmas tree for us so I'll make sure they still get their normal donation, and the £25 I normally spend on the tree can go to another charity (I've done a Christmas donation to the food bank already but might send a bit more to them).

Yesterday I finished wrapping up all my Christmas gifts. I use brown parcel paper, sellotape, and a bit of washi tape. This afternoon I'll start doing some Christmas doodles on them while I watch the world cup final. I'm not a particularly good artist but my family seem to like the doodles anyway so it's practically becoming tradition.

I will also use the world cup to do a money shuffle. I cashed out £35 from Quidco last week so hopefully that has come in so it can go straight to the mortgage. As we approach the end of the year I try to cash out any little pots I can. TCB also has about £7 in it that I need to transfer, and I managed to get a £10 Amazon voucher off Shoppix which makes that £20 from them this year.

Just one more week at work and then I'll be off for two weeks. And I can't imagine it will be particularly onerous as I'm already getting bounce backs saying people are off. I've started working on my maternity hand over notes so I'll carry on with that. I'm going to go into the office one morning with a box of biscuits for my team and a bag to clear out my desk so I won't need to go in and sort it out in the new year. I'll keep my mask on and hopefully there won't be too many people around. Then that will be one more task done and ticked off the list.

Dinner tonight is a Waitrose pork shoulder joint with a honey, garlic and rosemary glaze, and I'll do some homemade potato wedges with it. Have a good week everyone!

ruby_eskimo

Lovely to hear that you're being made to feel empowered during your care with the maternity services - so many of my friend's have said that it makes a huge difference in the overall experience.  Enjoy your time off over Christmas.